Women in contemporary Indian Literature and Society

Women in contemporary Indian Literature and Society

Unknown in Europe, India has an impressive number of remarkable women writers, committed intellectuals and essential publishers. Can we therefore speak of a female approach to Indian history, of an original narrative approach that would be specific to them? Thanks to Christine Cornet, head of the "Books, Ideas and Knowledge" department of the Institut français in New Delhi, come and meet 3 women with different backgrounds, who each carry a valuable interpretation through their novels or essays on contemporary Indian society.

Former New York Times journalist, Mira Kamdar works today for Courrier international. She dedicated a biography to her grandmother to better understand her own origins (Motiba's Tattoos: A Granddaughter's Journey into Her Indian Family's Past) and several essays on current India, among them Planet India: The Turbulent Rise of the World's Largest Democracy and the Future of our World and in French: 80 mots de l'Inde. Aanchal Malhotra is an essayist, historian and artist whose book Remnants of Partition: 21 Objects from a Continent Divided, received a great success. It addresses the cruel and painful division story of India and Pakistan in 1947, the French translation will be published in May. Thanks to An Atlas of Impossible Longing, The Folded Earth and Sleeping on Jupiter, the novelist and publisher Anuradha Roy, winner of numerous important literary prizes, much appreciated also by French-speaking readers, is one the most important novelists of her country. The French translation of her latest novel, All The Lives We Never Lived, will be published this spring.